Fifth Monday in Lent.
IN WHAT THE VICES ARE ROOTED.
The soil in which the Seven Vices find their root is Self-love, or rather in an undue and disordered love of Self. If we really loved ourselves we would seek to mortify and kill all the vices in us; but it is through undue and irrational self-love that the vices find root and opportunity to grow and flourish.
1. Self-love is not in itself sinful. God has planted in every man a love for himself. It is part of the nature of every man and of every intelligent creature to take care of self, and seek those things which conduce to its welfare. God has even set self-love as the measure to us of the love we should bear to our fellows. (Matt. xix. 19.)
2. Self-love becomes sinful when it is excessive and unreasonable. When, for instance, the love of self makes a man disregard another’s need or comfort. When, moreover, it becomes a dominating passion in the soul, obscuring and even extinguishing the love of God. When it seeks wrong ends for self, the indulgence of selfish pleasures, selfish comforts, passion, glorification. Then self-love is sinful. When a person takes no interest in any subject but what concerns self, has no talk save of what touches self, sees everything in the light in which it affects self, then self-love is unduly great.
Moreover, self-love may be disordered when it seeks for its end apart from God, in its pleasures, in its self-glorification, in its self-righteousness. Some people dethrone God and set up self in His place, and make self-interest their only law, and self their only law-giver. Again, self-love becomes sinful when it sees good where good is not, and takes the appearance for the reality.
Self-love is disposed to self-delusion whenever it is allowed to consider itself too highly.
3. Self-love once excessive and unreasonable, draws on to pride, avarice, luxury, gluttony, anger, indolence, because it shows man his supreme good in honours that flatter, riches and pleasures that puff up and indulge self-love, revenge against such as offend self-love, and that neglect of duty which comes so easy to those who give way to self-love. All the Seven Vices minister to self-love, pamper and feed it, assist in its growth, and tend to make it take the place of God in the heart.
Self-love is harmless so long as it does not encourage the growth of these noxious vices. We must therefore be very watchful of ourselves, and hold our love of self under severe control, never allowing it to become a soil in which vices may luxuriate, but seeing that it be a garden plot in which Christian graces spring up, which it well may, for the same soil that grows weeds will grow flowers.
4. Self-control, self-renunciation, are required of us by Christ. “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” (Matt. xvi. 24.) The true love of self has a far eye and looks to eternity, and seeks those things that are above, not the things that minister to self-love below;seeks the salvation of the soul, not the pampering of the flesh and the flattery of pride. And the only way of obtaining the imperishable riches and unfading joys, is by resisting the inclinations of the carnal nature towards such as are for a time, and perish in the using. There is a true love of self and a false love of self; or rather love may be directed towards the elevation of the better self, or to the degradation of the inferior self. It is necessary to distinguish between the elements that make man, Body, Soul, and Mind, and to seek those things which minister to the superior elements—Mind and Soul, not to the animal part of man—Body. Or again, not to serve only the Mind and neglect the Soul, but to seek the welfare of the Soul first of all.
Simple Maltese Cross